Valderen [The Second Part of Farnor's Tale]

by Roger Taylor

  His every fibre protested at what he saw and felt as he looked at Rannick and his grotesque mentor. It seemed to him that they were both far and near, the focus of the fearful gash that had been wrought in this reality. For it was not the worlds beyond that wrought the harm. It was their nature to be where they were, just as it was the nature of this world to be where it was. It was only in the wild conjoining of the two that the imbalance, the chaos, could be made manifest.

  Agonizingly, Farnor forced himself up into a sitting position.

  As he did so, his hand fell on the jagged end of Marrin's broken staff. Faintly, in the long dead wood, he felt again the presence of the most ancient. And with it came the memory of the Forest, awash with the dawn sun and the ringing sounds of the horns of the Valderen. And too the remembrance that whatever else, he must hold to his resolve to honour the lives and the love of his parents by being as they had been, and as they would have wished him to be: true to himself.

  Human he was, and thus savage and cruel he could be, as need arose. But always he had choice. Always everyone had choice. His savagery and cruelty had saved him from the creature, but perhaps the creature itself had had no choice in its nature. Rannick however, did. And he could do no other than help him.

  He held out a hand towards him. ‘Rannick, no,’ he shouted into the eerie stillness. ‘Come back. Nothing there belongs here. There's only loneliness, pain and madness for you if you go on. Come back.'

  He hesitated for a moment, then he cried out, ‘I forgive you the death of my parents.'

  Rannick started violently and his hand clutched at the creature feverishly. ‘No!’ he cried, his face alive with horror. He began to sway unsteadily. The vision of the worlds beyond shifted and changed, and Farnor felt Rannick reaching out, moving further and further into those places beyond, gathering as never before that which might give him the power to protect himself from the fearful revelation he heard in Farnor's words.

  Farnor reached after him. Rannick's doubts and pain filled him, as did his desires. ‘No, Rannick. I forgive you, truly. Come back.’ But even as he spoke, he knew that in reaching for him he was reaching out once more to make whole the rent that Rannick had torn in the fabric of this reality. For therein lay Rannick's pain. And he knew too that Rannick had bound himself dreadfully to those places beyond.

  Yet still there was hope.

  'No, Rannick!’ he cried out again, in desperation. ‘Come back! Let go! Let go! LET GO!'

  Then there was silence.

  Save for the lingering echo of Farnor's final, plaintive cry...

  And the howl of the creature.

  And when that was no more, Farnor, pain-racked, was alone in a damp, empty cave, dimly lit by Angwen's tumbled lantern. Both Rannick and the creature were gone, and no sense of either lingered anywhere.

  'No,’ Farnor whispered faintly, over and over. ‘Let go. Let go.'

  Then he wept.

  * * *

  Chapter 27

  Farnor was found the following day by a search party of villagers and Valderen. He was leaning against a rock at the entrance to the cave, exhausted and covered in blood. Apart from some bad bruising, however, he was unhurt.

  There was all manner of speculation about what had happened to Rannick and the creature, but despite every entreaty Farnor would say nothing except, ‘They're gone.'

  Besides Farnor's mysterious reappearance and the apparent destruction at his hand of Rannick and the creature, many other tales from that night went down into village and Valderen legend. Marna's desperate leap through the burning gate to rescue the four strangers. Rannick's screaming flight into the night. The death of Nilsson. And the strange and terrible fire that had consumed even the stonework of the castle until it had suddenly flickered out, as if it had never truly been there.

  And too there was the appearance out of the woods of the Valderen and the four strangers escorting the remainder of Nilsson's men to join those held by the villagers at the castle. Following the death of their leader at the hands of their new Lord, most of Nilsson's men had thrown down their weapons, though a few had fled into the Forest. It proved to be a costly mistake for them however, as Angwen, quiet and graceful, had listened to Farnor and trusted him, and she and the other women were waiting, bows and vicious hunting arrows ready, for the sudden arrival of armed strangers. They killed all of them without mercy, as is the way with women when they choose to kill.

  And they killed Rannick's awful steed also, as, both masterless and riderless it careened, howling, through the Forest.

  In due course, the survivors were given to the charge of a contingent of the king's army which had eventually been drawn to the area by news of Rannick's depredations in the surrounding countryside.

  'Others will be sent to take them, in time,’ Engir told the king's commander. ‘We must return home as soon as possible.'

  'What did they do that you travelled so far and for so long to find them?’ Marna asked Aaren.

  Aaren looked down at her hands. ‘Wearing a false livery, they rode into a quiet village one misty autumn morning and killed everyone they could find,’ she said without emotion. ‘Men—women—children. None were spared. Then they burned the houses.'

  The stark flatness of the telling shook Marna more than any amount of passion could have.

  'Why?’ she asked, rather hoarsely, after a moment.

  'To start a war,’ Aaren replied, as flatly as before. ‘A civil war.'

  'Which you won, I presume,’ Marna retorted savagely, suddenly desperately angry at this coldness.

  Aaren looked up sharply, but though she saw the torment in Marna's face, she did not spare her. ‘You stood with us all amid the Valderen's grief when the butchered remains of their dead were buried. You saw the terrible wounds that came out of the Forest. And you heard the screams of people maimed for ever. And there are injuries you can't see.’ She fidgeted with her damaged finger, then tapped her head. ‘In here. Like the memory of the one you killed. He'll never leave you, Marna.’ She seemed to relent a little. ‘And all this was barely a skirmish.’ She paused. ‘No one wins a war, Marna. Least of all a civil war. The more fortunate survive and grow a little wiser. But no one ever forgets. Not a day passes for as long as they live but some memory doesn't come back to them.'

  'Why do you stay a soldier, then?’ Marna asked. She had not intended it, but again there was a hint of anger and reproach in her voice.

  There was an equal note of annoyance in Aaren's reply. ‘Because circumstances made me such. And just as it was right for me then, so it's still right for me now.’ Marna could not tear her eyes away from Aaren's bleak gaze. ‘There are evils in this world, Marna, and there are always people who choose to forget or ignore that, and then they need people like me and the others—with our particular skills—because of the inevitable consequences of that forgetting.'

  Marna suddenly felt very ashamed. ‘I'm sorry,’ she said. ‘I won't forget.'

  Unexpectedly Aaren embraced her. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I know. Circumstances have made you one of us, haven't they?'

  They talked a lot after that. And Marna thought a lot.

  * * * *

  The Valderen and the villagers became cautious friends. As did the villagers and those people from other villages who had been brought there as captives. Indeed, after the kind tending of these unfortunates, the villagers did much to help the communities over the hill that had suffered from Rannick's ambitions. It became much less ... eccentric ... for villagers to travel abroad.

  While they remained in the village, Engir and his companions found themselves engaged in long discussions with Gryss and elders from the other villages, all anxious to make preparations to ensure that no such tragedy could befall them again. Derwyn, too, listened thoughtfully and sorrowfully, and made his own resolutions for the future.

  * * * *

  Farnor, with the help of his neighbours, began to rebuild his farmhouse, and very soon part of it was fit to live in.
Gryss and his other friends watched approvingly, but grieved a little at the sadness that now seemed to lie just below the surface of the young man.

  One evening Aaren, Yehna, Levrik and Engir rode into the Yarrance farmyard, together with Marna. Farnor welcomed them warmly and, in his still rough-and-ready home, he entertained them as well as he could, recounting yet again his journey through the Great Forest and his encounter with the most ancient of the trees. The four exchanged significant glances when he talked of Uldaneth, but said nothing. Then they, in their turn, talked of their own land and their long journeyings.

  A silence fell over the group. Farnor grinned sheepishly and was about to remark on it when Engir spoke. ‘We're leaving tomorrow,’ he said. ‘The Valderen are going to allow us through the Forest. It'll save us a great deal of time, and there's much we both need to learn from one another.’ Then, ‘Marna's coming with us.'

  Farnor started and looked at Marna. He said the first thing that came into his head. ‘Does your father know?'

  Marna gave a sad smile and a nod. ‘Yes, of course he does, you donkey.’ She gestured at the others. ‘We've all of us spent days talking about it.'

  Farnor took her hands and looked at her earnestly.

  'He's glad that I'm alive, and doing what I want to do,’ Marna added.

  'Well, so am I then, I suppose,’ Farnor said hesitantly. ‘Though I'll miss you. I'll miss you a lot.'

  'I'll be back,’ she replied, smiling. ‘This is a good place.'

  Farnor lowered his head. There was another awkward silence.

  'Farnor, do you want to tell us what happened to Rannick and the creature?’ Engir asked.

  Farnor shook his head and repeated his litany. ‘They're gone.’ Engir became more urgent. ‘There's much we haven't told you about our lands, Farnor. But you know we've suffered at the hands of people who used the power as Rannick used it, don't you?'

  Farnor nodded and Engir continued. ‘It worries us greatly that this power returned again when we'd all thought its very source destroyed. It worries us that that very destruction may have wakened the creature and drawn it from the depths, and we fear what else might have been stirred. Please tell us what happened. It may be more important than you realize. And I think it may help you too. Lift some of the shadows from you.’ He paused, then added finally, ‘Uldaneth will want to know.'

  Farnor stood up as if he wanted to leave the room suddenly. Then he sat down again and, without further bidding, told them what he could of his final encounter with Rannick and the creature.

  They asked few questions, but listened with great intensity. Engir's response when Farnor had finished was unexpected. ‘Will you come with us too?’ he asked. ‘There are people there who will understand your strange powers and what should be done with them. And people who can help to ease your deeper pain.'

  Farnor looked at him thoughtfully and then at Marna. Then he said quietly but unequivocally, ‘No. What I had to do, I did. I need to stay here now. To take back the threads of my life—my family's life. That too, is important.'

  'You may be needed,’ Engir said finally, with a hint of anxiety.

  Farnor thought for a moment. ‘Send for me then, and I'll come,’ he replied, simply.

  Aaren chuckled. ‘I told you,’ she said to Engir, who sat back with a rueful smile. ‘He's one of us, like Marna.’ But she did not amplify the remark.

  When they parted a little later, it was with promises that they would call on him the following day before they left. Rather self-consciously, Farnor leaned forward to kiss Marna on the cheek, but she took his face in her hands and kissed him on the mouth. There was a little ironic applause from the four watchers, and Marna blushed as she waved a fist at them.

  Farnor went for a walk after they had left. He took the dogs with him. It was a bright moonlit night, but warm and full of summer calm. He reached out to the trees, and they welcomed him, as they would always. Coming to the top of a rise, he stood for a long time staring at the remains of the castle, bleached by the moonlight. What had been merely part of the landscape, a relic of the need to stand against evil times now long since forgotten, had become a jagged reminder of the inevitable consequences of such forgetfulness.

  Then he turned away. Many things had changed as well as the castle but, he judged, on balance they had changed for the better, despite the pain that had come with the changing. A few mysteries had been lost, but there were as many as ever in the world, bad and good, and now the villagers had far more friends to share or face them with, and greater knowledge.

  As he walked through the warm night, it came to him that, despite all he had lost from his life, he was, nonetheless, happy. He could, and he would, honour his parents and the life they had given him by living it well.

  And with this simple realization, his mind, like his boisterous dogs chasing their cavorting black shadows in the moonlight, ran ahead of him. Once home, he would close his new door behind him, and—a new habit—he would touch the Threshold Sword that hung there, as it did in most of the cottages now. Then he would go up to his old bedroom, lie on his soft new bed and look up at the new beamed ceiling and wait patiently, and happily, until sleep carried him off into its welcoming darkness.

  * * * *

  So ends the tale of Farnor

  for the moment.

  Meanwhile there is the tale of the Whistler.

  * * *

  Fantasy Books by Roger Taylor

  The Call of the Sword

  The Fall of Fyorlund

  The Waking of Orthlund

  Into Narsindal

  Dream Finder

  Farnor

  Valderen

  Whistler

  Ibryen

  Arash-Felloren

  Caddoran

  The Return of the Sword

  Further information on these titles is available from www.mushroom-ebooks.com

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  Visit www.mushroom-ebooks.com for information on additional titles by this and other authors.

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  eBook Info

  Identifier:Taylor-Valderen

  Title:Valderen [The Second Part of Farnor's Tale]

  Creator:Roger Taylor

  Publisher:Mushroom eBooks

  Rights:Copyright © 1993 by Roger Taylor

  Description:Fantasy. 130728 words long. First published by Headline Book Publishing in 1993

  Language:English

  Type:Novel

  Format:text/xml

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